Truth
by Demeter1
Summary: Twenty years and Akito realizes one thing.


**"Truth"**

**Demeter**

**Disclaimer:** All rights and privileges of Fruits Basket characters, objects and plots are property and trademarks of Takaya Natsuki and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The original story, relationships, and characters found within the fic are property of Demeter.

**Series:** Fruits Basket

**Rating:** PG

**Characters:** Akito

**Notes:** vaguely spoilerish up to Ch.118

* * *

Akito is four years old and the screams of - "die, you monster! Die!" - a wife, a woman, and a-not-really-mother echo in her ears. She doesn't quite understand, but her father holds her ever so close and he sometimes tries to cover her ears. It doesn't work, the voice leeches through and everything else sieves away. Her father smiles like a broken record and the housemaids dress her with quivering lips and hard eyes.

(this is a truth)

Ren hates Akito for coming when she should have stayed in her womb. If Akito had stayed a little bundle of belly-flesh, none of this would have happened. They would have remained forever in the stasis of doting husband and adoring wife. Akira wouldn't be so absorbed with another woman; she wouldn't be stuck in this forsaken hellhole where her infuriated screams are mostly ignored.

Yes, it's _all_ Akito's fault.

She ignores the twitch in her hands.

* * *

Akito is eight years old and watching Akira die with every gasping breath he takes. She feels queer and unwound. The days fill with weeping and numerous curses upon Ren though Akito doesn't think she has anything to do with it. She sits with him, day by day as the seasons turn. She hardly notices. Akito listens to words born from knowledge of coming ends and something rips her heart up into itty-bitty pieces.

(this is a truth)

While he lies on his bed, Akira knows he has been a terrible father. And that Ren is a terrible mother. But that never stops him from loving her and it never stops him from thinking Akito was the most perfect example of everything good that ever came from the two of them. He wants Akito to know this. He wants her to know that she was the _only_ good and he tries very hard to tell her.

He sees something break and he knows, as the last bit of strength draws from him, that he really was a poor _chichi_.

* * *

Akito is ten years old and she burns every single kimono she has never worn. The smoke spirals away in sick circles and her smile is paper-bright. She will never be the person Ren accuses her of being and she will never wear the things that Ren herself chooses to wear. She buries the little piles of never-blooming futures and it's as if she was never a daughter of Akira, never a pretty girl. She is the master of the Sohma family and it feels like her party-ribbons have been cut.

Her world is filled with never-happenings.

(this is a truth)

Suzume finds no true disgrace in having a female master, but Akito's word is law and when this little baby doll demands the impossible, Suzume sets out to make sure the impossible is accomplished. It sometimes leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, but better than having a whore hold reign after so many distinguished years of service to the Sohma family.

It is not pity that moves her.

* * *

Akito is twelve years old and she experiences something she can't quite explain. It is like seeing snow through the shuttered blinds, like a smashed up piece of cake on a dirty plate. Her rooster leaves her and she can hear the silken threads snap one by one and it's remiscent of having one piece of her soul scorched taut and dry. She cries for him to never leave her and the joy she feels at his words of comfort is false. He has promised and doesn't she know that promises are made to be broken?

This is when Ren begins to taunt her.

(this is a truth)

Kureno loves Akito more than he can say. She is a full bookshelf, a thousand and one plastic dinosaurs, and he is sure enough to give his word. He will never leave her and even if the world was to end, even if he was stabbed repeatedly with a dull knife, even if the most perfect lover in the world appeared beaming on his doorstep; he thinks that none of it will be enough to separate the two of them.

He makes this promise and like all promises, it was meant to be broken in ways he never thought would be. As the rain comes brutally down around him and he feels the throbbing of his heart in his back, he wishes he had tried harder.

* * *

Akito is fourteen years old and she feels the dead watching her. There is now a difference; people notice, Shigure changes his courtship. What was once old and gentle and kind has now become filled with innuendos, long looks, and she almost thinks there is a reason to his whisper touches. He does what he says and says what he does but it makes her burrow into formal clothing and tradition of old. He pulls her close too many times and one bright winter morning, she awakens with his arm thrown over her and three stitches of clothing between the two of them.

This is not how she wanted it, she believes. She believes because Ren shouts ugly words and Suzume is classically disapproving. Akito wants to fix it. She does, she truly does.

(this is a truth)

He wants her like he wants water. It is not the matter of liking or disliking; he _needs_ her. Shigure rushes and a first time is taken because he can feel her drift over to a different animal, a different person. He doesn't regret because no one else can ever have her first time again and he will always remember the moment pain filled her eyes - but they were for _him!_ - and how he took his sweet time filling and withdrawing just so he can see tears well up and spill out of the corners of her lovely dark eyes.

Even if they haunt his later years, he thinks - he _believes_ - it was worth it.

* * *

Akito is sixteen years old and the vase breaks and something else too. Ren screams about inadequacy and reasons why Akito would die a miserable death. Akira continues to tell her that she was born to be loved.

She sees the sickly, beautiful woman Hatori has chosen over her and she feels fury like steel grow in her broken heart until it triumphs even the voice of her father and it happens too quickly. She throws all the ugly words she's ever heard Ren toss out and they twist into her own mantra.

Hatori bleeds and Kana forgets and Akito sobs in her rooms but there is nothing to be done. There can never be happiness for any of them and doesn't she know better than anyone else?

(this is a truth)

Though his eye speaks about loss and regret, Hatori knows it could have been worse. He could have watched Kana go mad with the secrets of Sohma and he could have watched everything he loves about her become stifled under the weight of grim reapers and curses no one understands. She might have been crushed and he wonders if in the end, Akito was right.

It doesn't stop the ache on a cold day, but Hatori is comforted.

* * *

Akito is seventeen years old and she is desperate to give some act to cement Kureno to her side. In the end, they tumble into bed and he is painfully gentle. She wants to cry but her eyes are surprisingly dry as she remembers another time, another moment where every slip slide of flesh felt like the burning fires of sin.

Here, her skin grows damp with sweat and a coil builds up inside of her. It is quite unlike anything she's ever felt and maybe a bit of everything she's ever thought. The sounds Kureno make are restrained and beautiful.

But he wasn't her first.

(this is a truth)

Sharing was not something Kureno and Shigure really had to do in their lives. They slept in separate rooms, they had different toys, they showed different interests. There was no need to fight over paltry things because as Juunishi, they mostly got what they wanted. But now, they are forced to share this one person and while Kureno understands there is something in Akito that makes her do desperate things, Shigure is too blinded by greed and hatred to notice anything but betrayal. He stews in it, steeps in a tea made strong by his own desire to be the one, the only.

They both know this can only end badly.

* * *

Akito is eighteen years old and she watches Shigure walk away, the jaunt and skip still in his step. She feels a choking weight in her throat and Hatori is forced to sedate her as the weeks spin around her. She catches fever and the state of her existence is threatened for longer than even her mother might care for. The shadow that hangs over her thickens and she can barely see her way anymore.

He walks away without a word and the curse of Ren now comes to fruition. Her Juunishi leave one by one and it is not always by the door they escape. Akito makes one rash bargain after another to lie to one woman and do a little convincing for another; but not her, oh no. She is not a woman. It is but a distant collection of memories and know-how and this is all she has and this should be all she needs.

(this is a truth)

The end has begun to spiral and circle around her. She can hear Ren laugh. And she lets Yuki go so he can come back.

* * *

Akito is nineteen years old and her beautiful picture has started eroding in the most impossible spots. A pebble, another pebble, and now there are a million rocks pouring in and she sees the shining hair Tohru Honda has. It's supposed to be ugly, but she feels the temptation crawl in her to reach over and grab a pretty lock and hold on tight. Something ancient and primal sniffs and a God sees the beginning of the end.

(this is a truth)

The first thing that comes to Tohru's mind is _this person is as beautiful as the curve of a new moon_.

The second was _this person is full of dark bridges and crushed rainbows_.

And it makes her want to do thinks like breaking old family curses. Tohru is not the first to want this. There are hundreds before her and they have all tried with earnest hearts and faith filled with confidence. No, Tohru is not the first.

But she is the only one to ever want to save the scapegoat figurehead too.

* * *

Akito is twenty years old and she is too old by her own reckoning and too young to live the life of her father. The twilight of her years has come upon the house and what hope that she should have given her Juunishi has sputtered out. The cold bites like a fairy choked up on acid and any remnants of happiness bleeds like one, two, three wounds to the face and leg and back.

The world leaks out of her glass and warps against a threadbare existence.

(this is the truth)

Akito wishes she'd never been born.

**- fin -**


End file.
